page_title: Great Mosque of Kairouan
section_title: Location and general aspect
hierarchical_section_title: Great Mosque of Kairouan / Location and general aspect
caption_attribution_description: English: An exterior view of the Great Mosque of Kairouan (in Tunisia) showing the buttressed walls and the minaret. Français&#160;: Une vue extérieure de la Grande Mosquée de Kairouan (en Tunisie) montrant les nombreux contreforts des murs extérieurs de l'édifice et le minaret.
context_page_description: The Great Mosque of Kairouan, also known as the Mosque of Uqba, is a mosque situated in the UNESCO World Heritage town of Kairouan, Tunisia and is one of the most impressive and largest Islamic monuments in North Africa.
  Established by the Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi in the year 50 AH at the founding of the city of Kairouan, the mosque occupies an area of over 9,000 square metres. It is one of the oldest places of worship in the Islamic world, and is a model for all later mosques in the Maghreb. Its perimeter, of about 405 metres, contains a hypostyle prayer hall, a marble-paved courtyard and a square minaret. In addition to its spiritual prestige, the Mosque of Uqba is one of the masterpieces of Islamic architecture, notable among other things for the first Islamic use of the horseshoe arch.
  Extensive works under the Aghlabids two centuries later gave the mosque its present aspect. The fame of the Mosque of Uqba and of the other holy sites at Kairouan helped the city to develop and expand. The university, consisting of scholars who taught in the mosque, was a centre of education both in Islamic thought and in the secular sciences.
context_section_description: Located in the north-east of the medina of Kairouan, the mosque is in the intramural district of Houmat al-Jami (literally "area of the Great Mosque"). This location corresponded originally to the heart of the urban fabric of the city founded by Uqba ibn Nafi. However given the natural lay of the land crossed by several tributaries of the wadis, the urban development of the city spread southwards. Human factors including Hilalian's invasions in 449 AH (1057 AD) led to the decline of the city and halted development. For all these reasons, the mosque which once occupied the center of the medina when first built in 670 is now on the easternmost quarter abutting the city walls.
  The building is a vast slightly irregular quadrilateral covering some 9,000 m². It is longer (127.60 metres) on the east side than the west (125.20 metres), and shorter on the north side (72.70 metres) than the south (78 metres). The main minaret is centered on the north. 
  From the outside, the Great Mosque of Kairouan is a fortress-like building with its 1.90 metres thick massive ocher walls, a composite of well-worked stones with intervening courses of rubble stone and baked bricks. The corner towers measuring 4.25 metres on each side are buttressed with solid projecting supports. Structurally given the soft grounds subject to compaction, the buttressed towers added stability to the entire mosque. Despite the austere façades, the rhythmic patterns of buttresses and towering porches, some surmounted by cupolas, give the sanctuary a sense of striking sober grandeur.
caption: The outside has many buttresses. Here is the northwest corner.
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